Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Fortune does a nice look back on how long Apple has waited from announcement (which seems to be October 4th at this point) and actual launch of the iPhones and iPads. Initial launch windows are huge because there weren’t really competitors in the space quite yet.

Importantly, the general trend is towards a smaller window.

Ten days out, October 14th, seems like a reasonable projection, doesn’t it?

On Monday, The Korea Times wrote Samsung would seek “a complete ban” on iPhone 5 sales right after the handset goes on sale in Korea. Today, Reuters chimed in with new pieces of information asserting Samsung’s retaliatory moves could include an injunction against iPhone 5 in Europe. The story, based on “a source familiar with the matter”, goes like this:

Samsung Electronics Co is considering legal action to ban sales of Apple’s new iPhone, a source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, in what could be its strongest step to defend against claims by the U.S. firm that the South Korean firm had copied its product designs. The source declined to elaborate further on where Samsung planned to take legal actions and the Maeil Business Newspaper reported that the South Korean firm may seek injunction request on Apple’s new iPhone in Europe.Recent developments have brought new twists, marking a change in Samsung’s otherwise defensive handling of its ongoing legal spat with Apple, its biggest buyer of electronic components. The case now involves 23 lawsuits in multiple countries such as France, Japan, Germany, Korea and the United States. In fact…

…Apple’s accusations that Samsung thoroughly copied their iOS mobile devices with the Galaxy smartphones and tablets have brought their long-standing business relationship to the point of no return, with Apple allegedly taking its lucrative chip making business to rival TSMC. Apple is expected to unveil iPhone 5 at a media event later this month. The sought-after phone should hit store shelves early October.

In the face of the shrinking economy and broad market decline, AAPL yesterday surged 2.8 percent at $411.65 a share for a market valuation of $381.62 billion. The Cupertino, California gadget king is now worth more than Exxon Mobil, which up until recently used to be the world’s most-valued company bar none. It is also approaching the combined value of Microsoft and Google.

Today, we’ve been served another eyebrow-raising factoid which helps paint Apple’s ever-growing influence in the world, via Bloomberg:

Putting Apple Inc. (AAPL) in the Dow Jones Industrial Average would mean the benchmark gauge would get 22 percent of its value from the iPhone maker, too much influence even for the world’s largest company, according to Bespoke Investment Group LLC. Apple, trading at about $420, would have the largest weighting in the 30-company measure because Dow companies are ranked by stock price, not market value.Apple shares would have to be split if the stock were included in the Dow, the investment group wrote in a note to clients: “If the stock were added to the index without a split in the shares, it would have a disproportionate weight in the index, making it more like the Dow Jones Industrial Apple.”

Dow Jones Industrial Apple, we love the sound of that. Another quick nugget: Shares of Apple are now worth 91 times their 1997 value when Steve Jobs had been appointed interim CEO…

AAPL vs. XOM: Apple is now the world’s most-valued company.

It should be noted that market valuation doesn’t really mean that much. Market valuation of any company has its ups and downs and is prone to both macroeconomic and microeconomic conditions, thereby changing quite often. market valuation, however, tells us one thing, and that is how confident investors are in a company and how high are their expectations related to future fortunes. Trends do matter, mind you, and these days Apple is killing it in style. In April, Apple had hit one-fifth of the Nasdaq-100 index, prompting Nasdaq OMX Group Inc which operates the Nasdaq exchange to rebalance Apple’s share of the index to 12.33 percent, down from 20.99 percent.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Autodesk’s SketchBook Mobile is just a fad which ranks down below on the App Store earnings chart. I mean, how popular a pro-grade paint and drawing software costing two bucks a pop can become in this freemium economy? You will probably be surprised to learn it amassed a cool seven million paid downloads on the App Store thus far. This would mean revenues in the range of fourteen million dollars for the company, or about $9.8 million after Apple’s customary thirty percent cut. Bloomberg has the story:

Autodesk Inc. spent almost 30 years selling engineering and design software to accumulate 12 million customers. It took a single iPhone app – and less than two years – to attract 7 million more. Autodesk’s SketchBook application, which also works with the iPad and Android devices, has boosted the company’s user base and drawn new kinds of customers, Chief Executive Officer Carl Bass said today.The San Rafael, California company benefited in ways more than just direct revenue from paid downloads…

Their profile and visibility heightened as a result of the program’s popularity among the iPhone crowd, the CEO told the publication. The aforementioned SketchBook Mobile app is a $2 download for the iPhone from the App Store. A Free version for iPhone is also available. The Pro release for the iPad can also be found, priced at five bucks, in addition to a free of charge iPad download with fewer features.